


Love Was, Love Is

by thewayaround



Category: Frühlings Erwachen | Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Boys In Love, Canon Gay Relationship, Character Development, Coming of Age, Declarations Of Love, Deviates From Canon, Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Late Night Writing, Love at First Sight, M/M, Out of Character, Sad with a Happy Ending, Slice of Life, Subliminal Messages, Their Love Is So
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 02:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15985649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewayaround/pseuds/thewayaround
Summary: They grew up thinking love was a simple thing. You live, you grow, you love, you die.Their love then was for their families, and for their friends, and for their God. It was childish and driven by years of prayer and simplemindedness.Love then was dreams, dreams that once seemed so close and attainable.They did not know real love then.





	Love Was, Love Is

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this on mobile because I wrote it in the notes of my phone so the tags fucking suck but this story is honestly super short but it's one of the best things I've ever written. 
> 
> It's more serious than I would have liked, but honestly I put so much of my own feelings and emotions toward love at both young ages and how it is affected by growing up in a small town. Not that growing up in a small town is bad for love, but in my opinion the smaller the town and the more closedminded a town is definitely takes a toll on what love actually means. 
> 
> Enjoy this beautiful gayness that I poured so much emotion into it almost sounds stupid. Also, I didn't proofread this because I'm posting it at 11:30 at night and have school tomorrow which means I don't have time for that right now. Feel free to point out any mistakes you see.

It's hard to believe they've come this far, that they've made it all these years. 

They fell apart once, years ago, when Ernst was foolishly spun, and Hanschen was too arrogant, and both of them were too young to realize what being in love actually meant. 

It was terrifying back then. 

They grew up thinking love was a simple thing. You live, you grow, you love, you die. 

Their love then was for their families, and for their friends, and for their God. It was childish and driven by years of prayer and simplemindedness. 

Love then was dreams, dreams that once seemed so close and attainable. 

They did not know real love then. 

They thought love was everything they had been taught. It was family, and friends, and God -- always God. 

They grew apart. Moritz passed, and Wendla passed, and Melchior Gabor vanished, and it was like everything they had been taught to love was leaving, going so abruptly they didn't have enough time to cherish what that the word actually meant. Ernst wanted to grow, Hanschen wanted to remain as he was. Their rendezvous grew less and less frequent until they stopped altogether. 

Hanschen left when he turned sixteen with nothing but a suitcase of clothes, stolen money, a passport, and a birth certificate. He left no note, no reasoning, no explanation for anyone but himself. It was all too much, staying with that life, where he was miserable and forced into false loves and dreams at the mercy of God and his father. He made it seem as though he was swept by the night. 

He left for America, New York specifically, where he used the little amount of English he knew to get a job as a bartender. He was there ten years later, even after English had come to him and the women began to fawn over him much more than his liking. 

He had wanted to write to his family back home, to his mama and his sisters, and he had wanted to write to Fanny Gabor to see if Melchior had returned, but most of all he wanted to write to Ernst. Had he fulfilled his dream of becoming a pastor? Did he have the beautiful wife he had wanted all those twelve years ago? Did he ever leave home? How were their childhood friends? Has someone been keeping the flowers on Wendla and Moritz's graves fresh? Did he miss Hanschen as much as Hanschen missed him?

At the time it had all been too much. He had finally come to understand love and what it meant. It was more than family, more than friends, more than God. 

Love was complicated, love was messy, and love was Ernst. 

Love was Ernst and Hanschen, and love was new dreams that his fourteen year old self would find preposterous. 

Love was two boys in a vineyard talking about a future that would never be possible in that town they grew up in. 

Love was two boys in a vineyard who saw nothing but what they were told was right. 

Love was two boys in a vineyard who just wanted something they were told they could not have. 

Love was two boys in a vineyard lost within each other, not knowing that that was what love actually was. 

Thirty years, he had said; thirty years and that night would seem nothing but beautiful. It had only been twelve and nothing would make it any more wonderful. Not the past, not the time held by the future, not even their new found understanding of love, because it had been as beautiful as the universe had wanted it during its present. 

He was closing the bar the night it happened. It had been snowing, and his scarf was wrapped around his neck, and a soft voice had whispered his name, so quietly he was unsure if it was actually someone speaking or just the wind. He had turned towards the sound and ended up getting slapped across the face. 

Then he had an armful of a sobbing Ernst, and Ernst in turn had his arms full of a sobbing Hanschen. Whether the sobbing brought from him was of pure happiness or pain, they were unsure, because neither of them had been concerned. 

Later when they were in his apartment, speaking in hushed German, Ernst had grabbed his hands and told him everything Hanschen had wanted to hear. 

He had missed him, he hadn't fulfilled any of his dreams because his dreams had changed so much since that time they were naive children in a vineyard. One would think him selfish as Hanschen pulled Ernst into his arms and kissed him deeply in a silent prayer of thanks. Every emotion that had built up for the boy over twelve years spilt from him until Ernst was sat on his bed and Hanschen was in front of him with his head buried against the boy's chest and his arms tight around a thin waist. 

"It's alright now," Ernst had spoken in their native tongue as Hanschen cried, one hand holding the back of his head and the other running through tangles of blond hair. "You aren't alone anymore." 

It was all he needed, he had thought, his ear pressed against Ernst's heartbeat as his sobs fell away, and yes, this was all he needed. All he needed was this boy who was holding his head and pressing sweet kisses to his hair. This boy who he loved and had loved for as long as he could remember, once childishly and then -- now -- for as long as he will live. 

 

///

 

A soft weight was pressed against his shoulder as the sound of early morning horns and cars buzzed into the room through the open window, tearing him from the warm embrace of sleep with a quiet hum. Fingers resting on his chest twitched quickly before the warmth in the sheets beside him shifted and turned away from the blue light of the window. The weight fell from his shoulder, and the sheets tugged against him before falling back into place. Slowly, his eyes peeled open, and he turned his head to look Ernst's back. 

The scattering of freckles across the pale skin of his shoulders seemed to dance in the blue of the morning as Ernst breathed slowly with sleep. His hair stuck to the pillow where it had grown too long, and the sheets were tucked under his arm. His legs had fought free in the night, the knit blankets bunched up around his knees as a slight breeze blew through the room, goosebumps on his flesh as the thin, white curtains moved like Atlantic waves along the wind. His sleeping pattern was just so Ernst that the blonde was unsure how he himself slept peacefully. 

Hanschen turned onto his side and pushed himself towards the sleeping boy, pulling the blankets from around his legs and tossing them back down to the end of the bed. He pressed a soft kiss against Ernst's shoulder as he hooked his arm beneath the boy's own, pressing an open palm against his chest and feeling the slow pulse beat from there. 

Ernst shifted against him as he readjusted himself, shrinking into Hanschen's chest as his slender fingers came to tangle with Hanschen's own. A soft sigh filled the room as Hanschen pressed a row of kisses across Ernst's neck and right shoulder, and there was a small thump against his hand. "Hansi, go back to sleep," the boy whispered in rough morning voice, and Hanschen melted at the sound. 

"The sun is up, my love," he whispered softly against ivory skin, his eyes falling closed as Ernst lifted his hand from where it rested over his heartbeat and kissed the knuckles softly before tucking the hand beneath his chin. "The day is new. We must rise and cherish it."

Ernst turns to kiss Hanschen's jaw, his eyes still closed. "The cherishing can wait until the light is no longer blue," he mutters, moving down against the pillows and humming lightly at Hanschen's kisses along his neck. 

"Sleeping until noon cannot be healthy, Ernst."

"Yet sleeping past dawn makes for better days." Ernst chuckles, turning in Hanschen's arms and half opening his eyes to glare at him. "You're warm and the room is cold. Why would I leave that?"

"You're only cold because your immune system is too weak," Hanschen jokes, chuckling as the way Ernst's eyes widen. "Don't act so shocked! It's caused by all your sleeping!"

Ernst smacks his teeth, shaking his head and turning away from Hanschen as the blonde laughs. "I don't have a weakened immune system, it's November outside and you insist on sleeping with the windows open." He shrugs the sheets off his shoulders and moves to the window, and Hanschen watches as he drapes the sheer curtains on their hooks on each side of the frame, bare skin a silhouette against the sun. Hanschen let's his eyes adjust to the light then drops them to a scandalous level, a grin on his face. 

Ernst's hair flashes blue as he turns over his shoulder to look at Hanschen and smiles brightly, all teeth and glee as they make eye contact. "You're an ass, Hanschen Rilow," he laughs as the blonde raises his eyes and peels the sheets from himself. Slowly he walks to stand behind his lover at the window, wrapping his arms around his waist and rubbing warmth into his skin. 

Outside the rain falls in a sheet. It's pooled along the sides of the road and splashes against the pavement in heavy drops, so much like the snow those five years ago. 

Hanschen's hands were flat against the skin of Ernst's stomach, moving with it as he breathed, and Ernst sighed when Hanschen buried his nose in the hair behind his ear. "You're a devil," he chuckles, his arms coming up and resting on top of Hanschen's own. Their fingers tangle against the skin at the base of Ernst's stomach, and Hanschen presses as close as he can against the man's back. 

"I love you," he says, watching the rain fall from his place in Ernst's hair. "I am so glad you decided to stay."

"I stay every night, Hanschen," Ernst responds, turning his head so he can bump his nose against Hanschen's, but both of them know what Hanschen really meant. 

Thank you for staying when you came that night, because I wouldn't know how to live without you otherwise. 

"I do live here, you know," he says in response, sliding away from the real intention of the blond's statement, like a way of saying "I could never dream of leaving after that night," without having to speak the actual words. 

"You have a drawer, you mean."

Ernst shrugs. "Basically means I live here... right?"

Hanschen smiles and presses a lingering kiss against his temple. "I guess it depends on if you want more than just a drawer."

The smile he receives is one he will never forget. It's as though pure joy is spilling in the room, all of it coming from Ernst like rays of light. Hanschen's heart is full, and it takes everything in him not to sweep this boy off his feet and into his arms the way he did when they were just teenagers in a vineyard.

Teenagers in a vineyard who knew absolutely nothing of what love actually was, but were able to find each other once they did, in the snow in front of a bar on a freezing November night. 

Ernst turns in his arms to kiss him properly, and it's slow and sweet and love.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Follow me on tumblr and feel free to message me or leave suggestions or prompts in my ask! 
> 
> tumblr- @sncrlynwtms


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